Measuring the Installability of Service Orchestrations Using the SQuaRE Method

Service-oriented software consists of middleware, such as application servers and runtime engines, into which service applications are deployed. This middleware is often complex and difficult to install. The deployment of services requires the crafting of deployment descriptors and packaging of applications. As a consequence, the installation of service-oriented software systems can be a daunting task. Installability, however, is an important influencer of the portability of software. Portability in turn is one of the main goals of service orchestration languages based on open standards. In this paper, we investigate the installability of service orchestrations based on the Systems and software Quality Requirements and Evaluation (SQuaRE) method, the new series of software quality standards currently under development by the ISO/IEC. We develop a measurement framework based on SQuaRE and tailored to evaluating the installability of service orchestrations and their runtimes. We validate the measurement framework theoretically and show its applicability in a case study.